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KENNETH RAND 




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BY 

KENNETH RAND 




BOSTON 

SHERMAN, FRENCH & COMPANY 

1913 



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copybight, 1913 
Sherman, Fbjsnch &" Company 



©CI.A350888 



7 



TO 

MY FATHER 



AUTHOR'S NOTE 

The author wishes to thank the 
editors of the following magazines 
for their courtesy in permitting 
him to reprint many of the poems 
in this volume: Yale Literary 
Magazine, Lippincott*s, Adven- 
ture, Smith's Magazine, Yale 
Courant, and Yale Record. 



CONTENTS 

PAGE 

The Dirge of the Sea-Children ... 1 

SiLENUS 7 

The Apostate 8 

"There's Likewise a Wind on the Heath" 9 

The Garden Wall 10 

Tuscan Dawn-Song 12 

To You IN Romany 13 

Auswanderer 15 

The Suicide 17 

The Debt of the Gods 18 

The Red Romance 19 

The Old Highway 20 

Paganism 22 

Thalassia 23 

The Witch of Memory 25 

The Pretender 26 

A Lyric from the Spring-Epic .... 28 

Lover's Dawn 30 

The Sea-Tramp 31 

The Crows S3 

Onagh of the Western Wind .... 34! 

Epitaph 36 

Harbor-Bound 37 

Romance 38 

The Prodigal 39 

The Thorn-Garden 42 

The Flower-Peddler 43 

Morning-Song on the Open Road ... 44 

The Life Prisoner 46 

The Knight 47 

Straw-Death 48 

Sympathy 51 

Rouge et Noir 52 

The Corpse-Fire 54 



CONTENTS 

PAGE 

Visions 56 

Apostasy 58 

The Wonderful World 59 

The Ballad of the Gypsy King ... 61 

A Portrait 65 

The King and I 66 

The Roadside Weeds 67 

Disillusion 69 

The Time-Fools 70 

The Huckster 71 

When the Poet Died 74 

In Avalon 75 

The Song of the Butterflies .... 76 

De Amicitia 78 

Leaven o' Life 79 

The Two of Us 80 

A Song of the Old Gods 81 

At the Altar of Youth and Love . . 83 

The Tops'l Schooner 84 

lotophagoi 86 

"Et Ego in Arcadia Vixi — " .... 87 

Gypsy Song 88 

Sea Chantey 90 

"The City of Dreadful Dawn" ... 91 

Victory-Song of the JEgean Pirates . . 92 

My Friend Pan 94 

The Road to Romany 95 

The Song of the Optimist 96 



THE DIRGE OF THE SEA-CHILDREN 
AND OTHER POEMS 



THE DIRGE OF THE SEA-CHILDREN 

THE MOURNERS 

This for the sea-child — all the open seas 
For grave — a square of canvas, iron bars 
To help him down — and let the hissing spray. 

Speeding the dying day. 
Chant the wild death-song with the wet sea- 
breeze, 

Down from the woe and the wars 

Of the feverish world of men — 
Into the cool arms of the old sea-mother — 
Could another 

Soothe you as she does, when 
Lost in the meshes of her streaming hair 
You hear her croon that magic melody 

Of grief too strong to bear — 
Sobbing along the beaches endlessly 

Her weird dusk-dirge, 
rill the gray ocean and the gray sky merge, 

And all is dark — 

Hark!— 
The poignant wailing of eternal Pain! 



[1] 



THE SURF 

Grief — grief — grief — in vain 
We sigh the sadness of the rolling years 
And cry the madness of the brooding Fears — 

Grief — grief — grief — the chain 
Of Time runs out and dims in formless black 
Obscurity, a night without a star, 

Strown with the dim tide-wrack 
Of derelict dreams. 
Far, far. 
Is it a light that gleams 
Over the waste sea-track? 

Grief — grief — grief — behold 
The tongueless sorrow that pale light reveals 
The songless morrow that wan cycle wheels 
In from the gloom of Time! 
Grief — grief — grief — the gold 
The lavish Day-star squanders fades to brass — 
See how he wanders, like a pallid mime 
Over the shoaling ocean's sodden swell. 
Where never keel shall pass 
Nor skilled tongue tell 
The romance and the glory and the rhyme — 
The mystery — 
Of silent sea — 

[2] 



Or the grand frenzy of the storm-wind's wrath! 
Here is the mighty epic's aftermath — 
Salt-barrens, and a night without a star, 
Strown with the dim tide-wrack 
Of derelict dreams. 
Far, far. 
See how the last light gleams 
Over the waste sea-track! 

THE MOURNERS 

Sobbing the song breaks — hear the ripples lap 
The shifting, changeless sands — 
See how they wrap 
Their light foam-fingers round the clumps of 
weed — 
Stroking with fairy hands 
The flotsam that the restless breakers breed — 
Casting upon the beach to rest awhile, 

Till the flood-tide 
Draws them once more to her capacious breast. 
Plays with them, here and there, to trick, be- 
guile 
Her world-long road's unrest — 
Then spurns aside. 



[3] 



Restless, O Mother, as your children's hearts — 

That flit like fading ghosts 
In a dim wraith-dance up and down the world, 
Blown like the stinging spindrift, onward hurled 

From Thule's battered coasts 

South where the heat-haze parts 
Its veil of fantasy, 

Gemming the sleepy waves 
With magic isles of scented sorcery — 
West, on a headlong, straining, sunset-chase 
Clear to the furnace-doors of Orient — 

Turn, O ye wander-slaves ! 
Ere strength be spent, 
Think ye to find a respite from the race? 

No rest — no rest — we die ; 
Yet still our corpses strew the foam-ringed 
strands, 

And still the sea demands 

Her children — hear her sigh — 

I 

THE OPEN SEA 

Children — O children — who have felt my kiss 
Have known my love, my tenderness — 
My soft caress 
And the exultant bliss 
Of my great strength that sweeps around the 
earth — 

[4] 



I — I — who knew your birth 
As I shall know your death — 
Croon you a magic slumber-song, a breath 
Snatched from the cool green grottoes in my 
deeps, 
Where sleeps 
The peaceful gathering of weary dead, 
Swung in the strong arms of my cradling 

tides — 
Softer by far than graveyard's moldy bed 
That Earth provides. 

Children — O children — who have known my 
smile. 
My merriment, my treachery. 
My guile 
And cruelty — 
My cold brutality — 
And worse than all, my bitter, biting scorn 
Of Man and all his darings and his deeds — 
Come, all ye children, ye that know 
Where leads 
The path ye go — 
And yet have sworn 
Your love for me on many a lonely tryst. 
And my cold lips have kissed 



[5] 



With your hot young ones, soft and fresh and 
red — 
O all ye dead — 
Ye brave and nameless dead — 
The path is free — 
I — I — the mother, lover, sla^^er, call 
My children all — 
I— I— the S€a! 

THE STJEF 

Grief — grief — grief — our tears 
We sow in spume along the barren shore — 
We know the doom the darkling ages pour 
O'er the still-struggling world. 
Grief — grief — grief — what leers 
Smirking and mouthing in the creeping dark. 
With sneering lip upcurled? 
Back, hack, 
fiend! for stark 
Lies the white salt-waste, stretching on afar 
To horror of a night without a star! 

• ••••• 

Whence come these drifting dreams? 

Far, far. 
Is there a light that gleams 
Over the waste sea-track? 

[6] 



STLEyVS 

They say Silenus danced once on a clifF 
That dropped a hundred even fathoms sheer 
To black-toothed reefs, the toppled battle- 
ments 
Raised by Earth-Titans when the world was 

young 
And new lands braved the sea. Aye, on the 

verge 
The leering wood-god, strayed in merry maze 
From fevered Bacchanalia, loosed his limbs 
In a wild clumsy choral prancing, till 
His inky shadow mocked the silver moon 
And shocked the somber dignity of night. 

And now when seas of Time have drowned the 

torch 
That flaunted flaming mane at Bacchic feasts, 
Silenus leaps in motley — here a patch 
Torn from a pale priest's robe, and there a rag 
Of silk or satin from a lady's gown ; 
For he is mad with stronger drink than wine, 
And he is mad with baser flame than lust, 
And from the rim of Time, wild-drunk with lifCf 
Flings empty flagons at the Infinite. 



[~] 



THE APOSTATE 

Toward a goal of fading mist 
I have plodded desolate; 

I the bloody rod have kissed, 

And have borne a brother's hate, 
And the shame of low estate; 

I have prayed, ye did not list. 

If ye had but stooped to clear 
From the doubting minds of men 

But a weft of clinging fear 
I would not have stumbled then 
To my father's gods again ; 

But I prayed, ye did not hear. 

I am but an atom caught 

In your long infinity; 
Have ye then of comfort aught 

In your cold Divinity, 

Or your silent Trinity? 
I have prayed, ye answered naught. 



[8] 



"THERE'S LIKEWISE A WIND ON THE 
HEATH" 

gypsy, what is the worth of life, and why do 

ye sing all day. 
When there's work to do in the fertile fields, 

a-reek with new-mown hay? 
— I sing, i' faith, of the skies above and the 

world that spreads beneath — 
There's a road that runs to the ends of earth, 

and a wind on the open heath! 

gypsy, what will ye leave the world, or ever 

ye come to die? 
I'll leave the sun and the lovers' moon, the gift 

of an empty sky — 
A lightsome heart and a roving foot, but the 

best that I may bequeath 
Is a road that runs to the ends of earth, and a 

wind on the open heath! 



[9] 



THE GARDEN WALL 

THE MOTHER 

Look ye, O children, the rose is blown — 

Gay is our garden now — 
For the Sun is trailing his robes of gold, 
Warm and scented, and fold on fold. 
Like a spendthrift monarch, has reckless thrown 
His cloak o'er a blossoming bough: 
— And the little winds that fall 
So wearily over the wall. 
Whisper "0 rest ye now 

To our failing minstrelsy — " 
O to be free, 
Young and free, 
And sleep in the shade of the wall ! 

THE CHILDREN 

If ye climb by the twisted oak 

That grows in the garden there, 
(There's a limb that ye all may grip, 
If ye dare the risk of a slip, 
And the toll of a tattered cloak. 

And a snarl of twigs in your hair) 
Ye may win, if ye do not fall, 
To the top of the garden wall. 

[10] 



Over, O over the garden wall, 

Out to the beckoning road — 
Looping away where the mountains call, 
Stooping to play where the valleys fall, 
Down to the shore of a sunlit sea 
Flashes the beckoning road — 
O to be free, 
Old and free. 
And follow the beckoning road! 



[11] 



TUSCAN DAWN-SONG 

Who is it sings by the Florentine gate? 

(And the soft night pales to the morrow) 
Patient art thou, O lover, to wait 
Thy beloved so long at the Florentine gate — 

(Ah, red flower of hearfs sorrow!) 

I hark to thy mandolin's lilting, 

(See the white road stretch to the dawning) 
While yestereve's roses are wilting 
To the tune of thy mandolin's lilting — 

(And the breezes blow the morning.) 

See where the highway dips to the vale — 
(Heart o* the Dawn, but life is sweet) 
And the shadows flicker and faint and fail 
Where the magical highway dips to the vale — 
(And the whole world waits at our feet!) 



[12] 



TO YOU IN ROMANY 

O WILL you never understand the reason that 
I love 
The magic roads of Romany your Httle feet 

have trod — 
The camp upon the hill-brow, where in lone- 
liness with God 
You see the sleepy earth below, the luring stars 
above ? 

And may I never tell you of the haunting of 
the dream 
Of sky and sun and wander-wind, and sails 

upon a sea 
As blue — well, as your eyes, my love, for 
can there really be 
In all the waiting wondrous world a truer), 
bluer gleam? 



I may not seek and be in hope that I shall ever 
find 
My black-haired blue-eyed gypsy-maid, and 
yet I ever dare 
To quest along the highway till the world is 
left behind, 
And then to follow farther where the kindling 
planets flare! 

[13] 



Follow farther — follow farther — though the 
dawning-lights remind 
There is but a lost dream-Romany — and you^ 
my love, are there! 



[14] 



AUSWANDERER 

O THE land is dead and your souls are dead, 

Dead with the burden of toil and tax, 
Cramped and stunted and shriveled and sere. 

And the lash of the law is hard on your 
backs, 

And the endless toil will never relax 
While the lungs draw breath and the blood runs 
red. 

Eat, for the strength to toil again. 

Toil, for the life is ever dear. 
Though the spirit starve on the meager bread, 
Though ye live like bullocks and not like men. 

For the law is the law, though it be of steel. 
Hammered and forged for the groaning 
earth. 

Not to be loosed, and scarce to be borne — 
Pity the land that gave ye birth. 
But what do ye think the land is worth 

In the question of human woe or weal? 
Flee, ere ye rot in your fathers' gyves — 
Up and away in the eye of the morn — 

With a favoring wind and a hurrying keel 

Flee — only thus may ye live your lives ! 



[15] 



O westward follow the beckoning sun, 
Prairie and forest and lake and sea, 
There at the end your goal shall be. 
Hemmed by no cramping boundary, 
But wide as the floor of the limitless deep, 
And free as the winds of the open sky, 

From the rolling slopes where the ^eecy sheep 
With their sunburnt herdsmen wander by. 
To the sheltered ranch in the mountain's lee. 
Freedom to live and freedom to die. 
Freedom to sow, freedom to reap. 
And freedom to rest when the work is done — 
When the blood is chill and the race is run. 



[16] 



THE SUICIDE 

Friends, who have loved me well and known me 
ill, 
Who called me joyous only yesterday — 
You know how dear it was to me to stray 

Free-footed, restless, drawn by every hill 

That promised Heaven beyond, till heart and 
will 
Swept with the winds a million worlds away 1 
Yet earth has never child she may not slay. 

Nor sea a lover that she cannot kill. 

The road is calling, and I may not wait, 
The breeze that fans the stars shall be for 

guide- 
Good friends, 'tis never time for tears, when 
wide 
Swing the kind portals of the ^on-gate ! 
And should men name me dead, I beg ye, say 
"Nay, he but wearied here, and went away." 



[17] 



THE DEBT OF THE GODS 

If so you never have known 

Joy of a god, 
Never, afar and alone, 

Pinnacles trod, — 
Battle of failure or love. 

Summits of gaining and giving, 
Lo, the high Heavens above 

Owe ye for living. 

If so you never have won 

Bliss of a night, 
Night of a victory done. 

Dream or delight — 
Climax of love or of strife 

Rapture of gaining and giving, 
Look ye, the masters of life 

Owe ye for living. 

If so ye never have leaped 

Stung by the fire. 
If so ye never have steeped 

Soul in desire. 
Suffered and won by a breath 

Struggle of gaining and giving, 
Masters of life and of death 

Owe ye for living! 
[18] 



THE RED ROMANCE 

There's a laugh and a curse on the dim-lit 
quays — 

(Ah, liquor and love and a waiting wave) 
There's a muffled cry on the languid breeze, 
Where the tide-rip sets to the silent seas — 

(Ah, liquor and love and a waiting wave.) 

What is it swings by the harbor's rim — 

(And all in the name o' the Red Romance) 

What is it bobs through the shadows dim? 

With a knife in the back can a dead man swim? 
(And all in the name o' the Red Romance.) 

O it's down to Jones with the bones of the 
drowned — 
(Flotsam rides on a following sea) 
Where the rolling waves sweep the wide world 

round, 
And the Trade-wind shrieks to the outward- 
bound — 
(Flotsam rides on a following sea,) 



[19] 



THE OLD HIGHWAY 

There once was a road down the valley, 

Dropping away to the seas, 
When the pine-woods crept to the edge of the 
dust 

That powdered the friendly trees ; 
When the pillared forest-alley 
Shook to the spring-wind's gust, 
And a gay stream fell like a tattered veil. 
Shreds of foam-lace, delicate, frail. 

Torn by the restless breeze. 

There once was a road down the valley. 

Ere the sun was shorn of its rays 
To gleam like a specter's wraith-wrought 
shield 
Through the dusk of the chimneys' haze — 
Ere the slaves of Task and Tally, 
Orderly, bloodless, steeled. 
Changed the rattle of galloping feet 
For the treadmill trudge of an engine's beat, 
And the hearth for the foundry-blaze. 

There once was a road down the valley. 
And still, as the old moons wane, 



[20] 



And the steel rails stretch to the mist-draped 
morn 

Like a glittering faery lane, 
Ye may feel the dead years rally 
To mock at the years unborn — 
A whinny, a laugh from a wayside inn, 
The clink of a bit and the hoof-beats' din, 

The brush of a wind-blown mane ! 



[21] 



PAGANISM 

A CONVENT — long and low and gray and still, 
Hedging the open road with quiet wall ; 
Above, a luring hill — and then a call — 

Some sunburnt stroller's song: 

"O the sun is gold and the sky is blue. 
And blood is warm and hearts are true^ 
And the world is just for me and you 
And Love to walk about in^ 

Ah, singer, you who cry the joy of spring. 
To ears that hear you through the Litany, 
Quick ! while the dream-lips cling, is piety 

Or the blind Love more strong? 

''Beloved, the gold of swift To-day 
Is snatched by Yesterday away — 
O seize and spend it while you may — 
*Tis a gay world to be out inT 



[22] 



THALASSIA 

A VISION of som€ moonlit night at sea, 

When ships are shod with silver, and the 
waves 
Soft-footed tread their endless chorals 
through 
To a low-tuned asolian melody — 

Was it a dream, or did the eye see true 
Fair scattered tresses flung upon the breast 
Of cradling rollers, sobbing burden-slaves 
Of flotsam from the Islands of the Blest? 

A maiden very fair and very young. 

With eyes that matched the sapphire of the 
seas — 
Full-robed in Death's eternal chastity. 
In vain the foam went wantoning among 

The silken-woven golden fantasy 
Of hair that dared the white flood of the moon. 

And brought the sun of lost Hesperides 
To shame Diana's silvered plenilune. 



[23] 



She seemed to slumber on the tender arm 

Of monstrous Titan mother-creature 
wrought 
In the dim cosmic dawn, of chaos-clay ; 
That could not save, and yet that would not 
harm. 
And weeping stooped unwillingly to slay ; 
That might not choose or know the Right or 
Wrong, 
But only love the child the waves had 
brought, 
And steal the wind's harp for a cradle-song. 

Whence came the endless wailing? Lo, the sea 
Rang with the sorrow of the dirge that rolled 
As though the wild, wet lips of all the 
world 
Poured out the anguish of eternity; 

"Ah, mortals, when the reeling ships are 
hurled 
Back to the womb of life at Fate's behest, 

Why fear, when I am here to guard and hold, 
I, who of mothers am the first and best?" 



[24] 



THE WITCH OF MEMORY 

Fresh spells ! New spells ! True spells to-day ! 
A charm to keep the frost away, 

That makes the rose-time never die — 

Come buy 

A bit of sun and summer-breeze, 

Of love and life and leafy trees. 

When zephyrs sigh. 

Fresh spells ! New spells ! True spells to-day ! 
A bit of magic from the May, 

A snatch of song where swallows fly — 
Come buy 
A spring-day when the pulses leap 
And all the southern breezes sweep 

The sapphire sky. 

Fresh spells ! New spells ! True spells to-day ! 
That point the road to Yesterday, 

That start the tear-drop in the eye — 
Come buy 
A ghost of long-forgotten love, 
The tryst, the silver moon above. 

The last good-by! 



[25] 



THE PRETENDER 

Grim blue guns that rattled and jolted, dim in 
the dusk of the morning, 
Bandaged heads and the curling lips that told 
of a victory won; 
Clink of the sabers and click of the hooves, and 
the leader's stumbling warning. 
And, bent o'er the horn of his saddle, a strip- 
ling with hair like a shred of the sun. 

O ye masters of battle, that ravage the hearts 
of the slumbering valleys, 
Ravage ye also the bloom of the garden of 
life, and the blossom of Youth? 
Lo, for the price of a Throne ye are selling a 
spirit to slave in the galleys — 
Ask ye the Child who is slave of the Throne 
— mayhap he will tell ye the truth! 

"Not for the crowns of a thousand kings, not 
for a nation's pillage, 
Not for the glory of ermine robes, nor fame 
for the bards to sing — 
Never for these would I barter a day of my 
dream in the old home-village. 
Youth that I lost when the scarred old vet- 
erans shouted and hailed me King. 

[26] 



"Kinsman, an ye would hold my throne, yours 
it would be for the willing — 
Ah, but I bow to a grim gray wolf, I who 
am lord of my realm! 
And the serpent nests on the dai's steps, and 
the word goes out for the killing, 
'Soldiers, your King bids ye each be brave, 
and wear his plume in your helm!' 

"You — do you lust for my blood, as they say? 
— or live with a secret sorrow — 
You, who are younger, in sooth, than I — I 
who am old as the world? 
Old as the world, and dead as the world, and 
drear as the trudging morrow 
Bringing its burden of one more day, and 
one more banner unfurled!" 

Grim blue guns that rattled and jolted, up to 
the rim of the morning. 
Grim gray troopers that softly swore, and 
dashed the sweat from their eyes ; 
Lo, from the head of the column there rippled 
the wave of a whispered warning. 
And the stripling strove to scowl like a King 
as the sun looked over the rise. 



[27] 



A LYRIC FROM THE SPRING-EPIC 

There's never song in all the world 

To charm the heart o' me 
Like song of spindrift tempest-hurled 

Across a barren sea; 
There's never tune in all the earth 
With half the swinging, shouting mirth 
Of the old song 
The bold song 
Of sun and empty sea! 

There's never joy in all the days 

That sweep the seasons by, 
To pass the lure of winding ways. 

Of wind and summer sky; 
There's never bliss can match the thrill 
Of dawn-light on a crested hill, 
And the gray road 
The gay road 
Beneath a summer sky! 

Ah, love, and can the sum of all 
The earth and sky and sea, 

The April-lure, the Summer-call, 
The Autumn's sorcery — 



[28] 



Outweigh the wealth of pagan gold 
Thy tangled, truant tresses hold, 
When the glad wind 
The mad wind 
Has lent its sorcery? 



[29] 



LOVER'S DAWN 

The earth and sky 

Have a song as old as themselves; 

And you and I 

For one brief moment, while the dawn-torch 

flings 
Its pagan tresses wild, for cirrus-elves 
To sport among, find wings 
That lift us to the hearing of their voices 
Ringing in cadenced chorals over trackless 

seas — 
Hark, how the wind rejoices. 
Singing the love-notes of long-lost Hesperides ! 

The earth and sky 
Have a song that is ever new; 
But you and I 

Have found a wild and haunting melody 
Of long unrest, of roses and of rue — 
Till all Infinity 

Fills with the perfume of dear joy and sorrow, 
Sweet tears and laughter of a phantom yester- 
day. 
What promises the morrow? 
"Feet wander paths that meet a million worlds 



away." 



[30] 



THE SEA-TRAMP 

O THE skies are dim and dreary and the days 
are dull and weary — 
If you hark you'll hear the eerie wailing of 
the autumn-gale; 
And there's in my heart a sadness mounting al- 
most to a madness 
When the ebbing harbor tide-rip tells its old 
familiar tale. 

Then I hear the sea-wind singing and the warn- 
ing fog-bell ringing, 
And a whisper comes a-bringing just a dream 
of Southern sun — 
Till my painted picture-islands lift their 
foamy-footed highlands, 
And I find the trail of rapture, ever new 
and never done! 

So I huddle down, a-dozing, while the dying 
coals are posing 
As the bloody sunset closing in the furnace 
of the West ; 
Then the moon, a ruddy wonder, breaks the 
velvet night asunder 
And the forefoot springs a-flaming o'er the 
Highway of Unrest. 
[31] 



Then old faces come to meet me, and old places 
seem to greet me, 
And old enemies to beat me in the fight for 
gold or fame, 
'Till my whole mad Youth is standing on the 
hearth-rug there demanding 
That I give account for wasting it in folly 
and in shame. 

Though ye be no kin, O Brother, dearer are 
ye than another — 
Blooded by the world-old Mother to the 
Ocean's sorcery; 
Though old bones may never bear it yet old 
hearts will ever dare it — 
Look! The harbor-lights are dimming. . . . 
Lefs heat to open sea! 



[32] 



THE CROWS 

Out from the gloom of the mountain-gorges, 

Dark in the glow of the dawn, 
See how they scurry like shadow-wrack, 
Each in his funeral-cloak of black, 

Faint and fade and are gone. 

Dancing away down the ribbed ravines. 

Chattering ghouls astride the breeze- 
Haste, O Beloved, thy weary feet. 
Out where the desert and skyland meet. 
Merging in mirage-seas. 

Beloved, the way was all too long— 

(See how they settle around!) 
Let the heat-fog's flickering fancy-veil 
Cover thy death when the spent limbs fail. 

Droop to the sun-baked ground. 

Up through the gloom of the mountain- gorges. 

Bed in the glare of the Sun, 
See how they swing in a serried line. 
Wheel and hover and weave and twine. 

When the bright day is done. 



[33] 



ONAGH OF THE WESTERN WIND 

Black was the night and wild — 
And the wet lips of the wind 
Planted fierce kisses ; 
Racing the cloud-wrack piled 
Sky-seeking crags, while behind 
Raved the mad blisses 
Tempest-taught sea-children know. 
Wrung from the wrath of the West; 
Tortured wave-devils below 
Heard its behest. 

Dashing on high, they clothed 
Reef-tattered headlands in white 
As for a bridal ; 
Crashing the waves betrothed 
Sea-foam to cloud-trailing night. 
While rang the tidal 
Anthem of thunder and fear 
Torn from the reeds of the gale — 
Plunging the surf-stallions rear, 
Lashed by the hail. 

Wet were thy cheeks, thy hair. 
Salt with the sting of the spray. 
Gay with the peril; 
Wilder, more fearfully fair 
[34] 



Than the cold birth of the day 
Paling in beryl; 
Mad with the passion and wine 
Poured from the caverns of space, 
Sudden I glimpsed the divine 
Joy of thy face. 

Born of the wild west wind, 

Savage, yet wise as the sea. 

Kin to its rages ; 

Sure hast thou suffered and sinned. 

Loved and rebelled, to be free. 

Daring the ages; 

Lo, and the night of my heart 

Flashed to a splendor of flame ! 

Hotly I sundered apart 

Shadows of shame. 

Wraith-maiden wast thou, or sprite 
Blown from the Isles of the Ghosts, 
Storm-fool's derision? 
Spun from the mist and the night, 
Thule's dim ice-battered coasts 
Wafted in vision? 
Lo^ -for the hands that I grasped, 
Loy for the lips that I pressed, 
Moched me and fled, and I clasped 
Winds of the West! 
[35] 



EPITAPH 

What wealth was mine, O Lord, I wept at leav- 
ing, 
As miser weeps who has too freely spent; 
And Faith and Fear of Death were lost in 
grieving, 
And restless discontent; 
I watched the Sun 
Its last course run. 
And died, still weeping, at its red descent. 

The gold that melted 'mid its fading blazes 

Was all the wealth my poverty could keep; 
The wind that whirled the leaves in idle mazes 
My barren-lands may reap; 
And yet I deem 
My wealth of dream 
Far dearer than the gold I held so cheap. 

Mine heirs, I leave you sun and scented breezes, 

And my great mansion of the open sky ; 
Fee-simple right to roam where free heart 
pleases, 
Where'er the path may lie; 
No words of doom 
Carve on my tomb — 
But just ^^He loved the world, and grieved 
to dier 

[36] 



HARBOR-BOUND 

Old ships that drowse at anchor, empty-hulled, 
Whose keels have known the wash of many 

seas, 
And borne full many burdens — argosies 

That foreign winds and foreign waves have 
lulled 
To restless slumber on the restless deep, 
That now in sheltered harbor-corners sleep 

The silent sleep of spent slaves burden-dulled — 
Old ships that sleep. 

Old men that sit a-dreaming in the sun. 

Whose lives have known the sting of many 

pains — 
The sting of pleasures too, mayhap — whose 
brains 
Have wrought what wonders ere their day was 
done: 
Forgotten heroes of a failing dream. 
Placid they sit — or do they only seem 
Careless of ancient treasures lost or won? 
Old men that dream. 



[37] 



RO^IANCE 

SoJiEWHZKE a sapphire ocean laves the shores 
Of garish islands, where the beaches' sand 
Is all fine-sifted gold-dust, and the land 

Swells like a dryad's boscwn to the doors 

Of loftv brass-domed palaces, burned red 
Beneath the tropic sunlight's liquid pall. 
Girt round with groves of wonder-blossoms 
taU 

Where aU the world but Love and War is dead. 

And Love is languishing in dungeon dark, 

And War is raging round the palace towers : 
And, wreathed with gay hibiscus, Death lies 
stark 
Half -hid in coppices of passion-flowers; 
And Failure laughs in rags, while mourning- 
bell 
Is sounding crowned Success's solemn knelL 



[38] 



THE PRODIGAL 

I SAT alone amidst the wreck of life — 
Its fading splendors 
Still lingered, failing; 
Poor pallid ghosts of love and joy and strife, 
Such phantoms as a fevered brain engenders 
That loiters, quailing. 
On the dim brink 
Of long oblivion, and clings 
To humble, simple things — 
As roses, ruddy sunsets, songs of birds — 

And fears to sink 
Back to the mother earth that bore it. Then, 
E'en while I pondered deep on prosy words 
(Vain words, like "dear," "beloved," — aye, or 
"God") 
One knocked, and knocked again. 
On the worn portals of my senses. 

Fairy-shod, 
A Being entered — nor more beautiful 
On earth the wheeling years have ever seen — 
And whispered, "I am Pleasure. Dost still 

know 
How good a sers'ant I have proved to thee — 
How dutiful — 
What gay pretenses, 

[39] 



Bright masks of bliss for thy dull poverty, 

Thou owest me? 
All that thy brain or heart or soul have been, 

They owe 
To me, to Pleasure, King of all the World!" 

But I was bitter with an ancient wrong, 
In that I e'er had lived and laughed and sung — 
For I was passion-hurled 
From sun-gilt crest of life's high pinnacle 
Down to the depths where rang the mocking 
song 
That Satan, somber-drunk, sad-cynical. 
Trolled in the days when "all the world was 

young !" 
I too was young once — or I think so — see. 
How the years slip like coins from open hands ! 
How old am I? A day — infinity? 
What matters it? Too old, in life, to live. 
And far too young, in years, to die. Ah, 
Pleasure, 
How may I pay the debt I owe. 
Or give 
Full, full redemption? Though 
Gold of all Time were mine, the endless treas- 
ure 
Of endless years, 

[40] 



Heaped in a mass to fill the Heaven-span, 
It scarce could buy one small, gay, lilting 

laugh 
Caught in a snare of dawn and dream and dew ! 

Ah, Pains and Griefs, and Fears, 
Man's dread familiars all, since life began, 
Ye are but sordid chaff 
Of blight-rid garnerings — the true 
Soul of the harvest lingers, mocking, hidden 
Under the symbol of a lilting laugh ! 

So, slave unbidden. 
So faithful, kindly, joyous, dutiful — 
Pleasure, of form so beautiful — 
Light-limbed, bright-tressed, soft-clad in silk 

and gold — 
Come you to mock? Bah! Get you gone 

again ! 
My hearth is deep with ashes, dead and cold. 

I 

And so you go? Well, then. 
Adieu! I watch you leave without regret. 

Ah, God! — and yet — 
Stay, stay! Once more — ah, just once more! 

— renew 
That old dear laughing joy of dawn and dew! 



[41] 



THE THORN-GARDEN 

Youth and Love once chanced to part 

In the garden of my heart; 
"Later on we'll meet again 

'Neath the bramble-hedge of Pain — " 

Thus spoke Love — Then braggart Youth 
"Rather 'neath the Rose of Truth !" 

When the cycles' slow revolving, 
All our hopes and fears dissolving, 
Wheeled around the trysting hour, 
Where was Love? and where was Youth? 
Thorn of Pain or Rose of Truth? 
Harh ye! Travel-stained and dour. 
Underneath the Rose of Pain 
Youth awaited Love again — 
While beneath the Thorn of Truth 
Jaded Love was seeking Youth! 



[42] 



THE FLOWER-PEDDLER 

With the columbine 

And the eglantine 
For new love, and for folly, 

Now by my rood 

I'll suit thy mood 
So be it grave or jolly; 

So be it sad 

Or bad or glad 
I have the flower to please thee — 

The red, red rose 

When love-light glows 
And Cupid's witchings seize thee; 

Or underwood 

For maidenhood 
And purest love, I borrow 

The violet shy — 

But should Love die 
I've myrtle for thy sorrow. 

Vve a hunch of vine 

And some columbine 
For Wine and Youth and Folly — 

But the flower for me 

(And perhaps for thee?) 
Is the rue for melancholy! 

[43] 



MORNING-SONG ON THE OPEN ROAD 

Awake, O Beloved! the dawn-torch is burning, 

The lark o'er the meadow his matinal sings; 
The darts of the Sun-god the mountains are 
turning 

From emperor's purple to crimson of kings. 
The road is before us — the hills call to follow, 

To beckoning distances luring away; 
To-day is to-day, and to-morrow to-morrow — 

Ah, quick! ere they die to a dim Yesterday! 

Awake, O Beloved! the moments are hasting; 

The summits are blazing with ruddy raw 
gold; 
And wanderlust-Yidden the spirit is questing 

Beyond the dim hills where the valleys unfold. 
O art thou a gypsy? then haste to the roving, 

And waste not in sleeping the gifts of the 
Sun, 
But out on thy journey be joyfully moving, 

That never is ended, yet ever begun! 

Awake, O Beloved! thy red lips are smiling — 
O pleasant the dreams that thy slumber-eyes 
see — 
Yet fairer the visions, that ever beguiling 
Call over the ranges of far Romany. 
[44] 



Ah, love, must I waken thee ever with kisses, 
My love with the dawn-splendor hid in her 



eyes? 



Ah, Thou and the Road are the dearest of 
blisses 
That gild our old world with immortal sur- 
prise ! 



[46] 



THE LIFE PRISONER 

Men with the flush of the wind in your faces, 
Glint of the dawn in the depths of your eyes, 

Send me a thought from the desolate places, 
Windy spaces of Paradise; 
/ shall never see new stars rise. 

Just one breeze from my palm-fringed islands 
Trailed like pearls on a dreaming sea; 

One lone gust from my storm-racked highlands, 
One lone cataract flashing free ! 
Master of Mercies, pity me! 

God! How I prayed, on my knees, for hang- 
ing- 
Death — for death — not a man-wrought hell! 

Answered the leg-bar's mocking clanging — 
**Lo, while you live, hear me clank your knell; 
Pray to the stones of your cellF' 



[46] 



THE KNIGHT 

Across the world I followed you, love, 
And found you weaving chaplets for your 
hair; 
I called the mighty dome of heaven above 

To witness You were fairest of the fair; 
I cast the wealth of princes at your feet, 
And spurned it, since you scorned to call it 
sweet. 

Sword of a king, or clash of bannered host — - 
Ah, love, they were but pawns I flung in 
play- 
Pawns that I laughing won and laughing lost. 

Or if it pleased you, laughing cast away; 
Yet, should the tumult stir a single bud 
Of your rose-wreath, I drenched the world in 
blood. 

Ah, Empress of my shadow-bordered realm. 
Who weaves a wreath of roses and of rue. 

Behold, the flaunting pride-plume of my helm 
Is at your feet, in dust laid low, for you; 

Ah, Gods ! There live none glorious as I, 

Who win one rose to cherish as I die! 



[47] 



STRAW-DEATH 

I WHO have lived my life, 
My years of hot-blood roving, in the sun — 

Now that my course is run, 

Is it for me to die 

Hemmed from the sapphire sky, 

Scene of my joy and strife — 
Die here — where the pale chilling blood can just 

Stain my wan lips 

As the soul slips 
Into the darkness? Shall I die in bed, 
Lost in the shadows of a dimming room, 
Unutterably sordid? Give me dust 
Sweeping across the barrens, choking down 
The feeble death-gasp till the red stars reel 
In a weird dirge-dance round my sinking head. 

Rather than see through gloom 
The specter-pallid nurse in white and gray. 
The ice-nerved doctor with his black-browed 
frown. 

Stealthily steal 
To fend the last light of the dying day 
With close-drawn blinds from my light-thirsty 
eyes, — 

Ye sunset-skies I 



[48] 



/ used to know your splendor! Let me die 
Like any dog, hut let it he away 
Under the open sky! 

Give me to die like a beast, afar, alone 

With but the hawk and crow 
To watch beside me while I cast my soul, 

And but the sky to know 
What my racked lips have uttered, what last 

groan, 
Or curse or prayer, I breathed to heaven above — 

And this the whole 
Boon that I ask of you — to split in twain 
With your wild night-winds, for the ancient 

love 
I bore you, O ye Sunset-flames, the smother 
That rides like some dire curse upon my chest. 

And let me feel again 
The blessed western breeze — my restless brother 
On many an endless road — that knew me best 
Of all the winds that sweep around the world. 
— Give me to drown in the dark, where, tempest- 
hurled. 
The black ship wavers down through soundless 

sea; 
Give me to die in a good fight, foul or fair. 
With but a heart to stab, a throat to clutch, 
And once again to see 
[49] 



That gay red haze of madness veil my sight- 
To feel the hot breath and the blood-stiff hair- 
/ ask too much? 
I am a beast, they say? 
Then let me die. 
By all the gods, just as a beast should die- 
Out in the -flaming sunset, far away 
Under the open shy! 



[50] 



SYMPATHY 

My neighbor, crabbed and mean and old as 
death, 
Runs in in mad despair — "Come quick!" he 

cries, 
"My house is blazing — all the things I prize 
The greedy flame devours !" "Why lose your 
breath?" 
I calmly answer — " 'Tis no lasting harm — 
The day is chill; the fire is nice and warm." 

My love and I fall out; we have some talk 
Right on the public path — it seems to me 
I ne'er have suffered such catastrophe. 
Just then — "T^/^^/, neighbor , and does Cupid 
halkf 
My dears, young blood is warm, you "know — 

in truth. 
To see you quarrel gives me bach my youth!" 



[51] 



ROUGE ET NOIR 

Red or black? The louis, spinning, 

Crossed the table's speckled baize; 
"Thine, O Luck, to pick the winning 

Color from the checkered maze." 
"Ah, mon cher, take care in choosing — 

True love counsels 'Play the red' — " 
"Red it is." — The game's amusing — 

"Faites vos jeux,' the croupier said. 

auburn her hair, and as warm as summer- 
Rouge — not much — was an omen gay — 

And eyes as hold as the ram red gold. 

So what was there more to say — to say- 
Aye, what was there more to say? 

Red or black? *'Mon cher, be heeding — 

Black has won — 'twill win again ; 
Hark to true love's humble pleading — 

Play the red, and play in vain! 
Black will win far more than treasure — 

Black it is — we'll soon be dead — 
Louis were meant to purchase pleasure." 

^'Faites vos jeux" the croupier said. 



[52] 



O raven her hair as the mane of midnight- 
Lips that swore they would e'er he true — 

And a pair of eyes out of Paradise, 
So what was there else to do — to do — 
Aye, what was there else to do? 

l'envoi 

Gaj the game — 'twas worth the playing — 

Louis, loves, have fleetly fled: 
What's two louis? Easy paying! 
''Rien va plus,'' the croupier said. 



[63] 



THE CORPSE-FIRE 

Sub-Tropical 

'Ware ! there's a light ! Do ye know the blaze 

And the stark grim shapes around — 
Where the smoke-wraiths weave on a wind- 
wrought loom 

A shroud for the reeking ground? 
Close? Too close! We'd 'a' joined the wrecks 

And the dead on the houseless sand, 
But the failing glare of the last grim Hearth 

Warned us away from the land. 

'Ware! There's a light on the weed-flung 
beach — 
Off — beat off — swing wide! 
For the ghost-glow flares on the breakers' 
crests 
In the gay surf-wash overside. 
Off — beat off — ye've the plague to praise 
And the beacon of Dead Man's Light — 
Aye, thank your gods that they burned a 
corpse 
From the cholera-camp this night! 



[54] 



'Ware! There's a light on the foam-ringed 
beach — 

Out — swing out — to the sea! 
And thank your gods for the on-shore wind 

That keeps ye fever- free ; 
The wind that sweeps from the ocean-waste, 

Cold and honest and clean, 
And swirls the sand on the ghost-rid dunes 

Where the bare-picked wrecks careen. 



[55] 



VISIONS 

In the Street — Afternoon 

A FACE, chance-met, 
With eyes lash-curtained, and perchance a 
smile, 
Or say, a tear; 
A glimpse of satin-shimmer, or the wile 
Of silken-curled coquette — 
Or here, 
Stumping and stooped, an empress with a crown 

As thorned as Jesus wore — 
Some poor unholy Mary, burdened down 
With such a weight of stark inhuman sorrow 
That all the gold of Magi-sung To-morrow, 
Heaping forevermore. 
Could scarcely drown it ! — ^then. 
Comes Youth and Wine and Laughter — 

And look — behind 
That crippled pencil-peddler — see, 
Between him and the haggard Magdalen — 

Serene, refined. 
With fresh-faced, solemn children trailing after, 
In prosy pomp. Respectability! 



[56] 



On the Road — Evening 

A road, 
Looping and twining to the heaven-rim ; 
A barren field, tare-sown 
By winds and birds, and dim 
Gray shadows trembling tenderly along 
The mighty loins of distant mountain-ranks — 

The high abode 
Of dream-divinities of moon and dew; 

While lone 
And far and clear as some queer elfin song 
A cow-bell clanks. 

Then through 
The dusk-wrought romance of the eventide 
Breaks with a shock the world — for there, beside 
The magic road, some vagrant ne'er-do-weel 
Kindles a fire to cook his evening meal. 



[57] 



APOSTASY 

And are the old gods dead, their altars hare. 
The flowers strezvn hy loving hands of old. 
Are they all withered? — Ay, indeed — the 
mold 

Lies thick on fallen idols, and the air 

That once was scented with the spice of Ind 
Now knows no censer but the flying wind, 

That wafts the breath of humble flowers there. 
For they have sinned. 

So, sinned they then, those wicked gods of yore? 
Say how they sinned, that I may understand — 
In that they ruled unwisely? — Nay, the land 

Did prosper, but they taught forbidden lore, 
Let Eros wander wild, nor did rescind 
The wanton laws of Youth undisciplined. 

And when Joy knocked, threw wide the temple 
door. 
'Twas thus they sinned. 

And this was sinning? — Ay, or so they say. — 
Ah, then, beneath my vine and tamarind 

Leave me to worship them, and go thy way. 
Thus have I sinned! 



[58] 



THE WONDERFUL WORLD 

"O TRULY the world is a wonderful place!" 

Sang the Poet at dawn ; 
"For the sun's at my back and the wind's in my 

face, 
And I'm off to the west at a merry good pace ! 

When I'm gone 
Just give 'em my blessing, and tell 'em from me 
I'll bring back a fortune from over the sea," 

Sang the Poet at dawn. 

"0 truly the world is a horrible thing 1" 

Cried the Poet in pain ; 
"It's made me a slave when I should have been 

King, 
I've worked with my hands, when I wanted to 
sing— 

And the gain 
That I won by the sweat of my brow is so small 
You scarcely could call it a 'fortune' at all!" 

Cried the Poet in pain. 

"And here I am home, with the sun at my 
back," 
Quoth the Poet at eve. 



[59] 



"It's little I have and it's much that I lack- 
I'll turn me around and go back on my track- 

I believe 
That it's gold that I see in the sunset's face- 
O truly the world is a wonderful place!" 

Sang the Poet at eve. 



[60] 



THE BALLAD OF THE GYPSY KING 

'TwAs over the stones of an ancient road 

That slashes the distant east, 
A ragged beggar came footing it in 

Where the monarch sat at feast; 
His hair was black, his face was brown, 

His eyes like witches' lights. 
And hot they shone on the ladies fair 

And boldly on the knights. 

"And who may ye be," cried the King in wrath. 

"That dare to burst on me 
In this lowly guise, when I sit at feast 

'Mid vassals of high degree? 
And who may ye be, who think the eye 

Of a beggar is fit to stare 
At the noblest maids of the royal court — 

The fairest of all the fair?" 



Now the ragged wight smiled a crooked smile 

And his voice was far from low — 
"O I am a Prince o' Romany 

Who dare to speak you so — 
I come as King to a brother King 

To ask for roof and meat. 
And there's never a maid of all this court 

That's fit to kiss my feet. 
[61] 



"For I am the monarch of more than land 

As well in your heart you sense — 
Ah, son of the race of a thousand kings, 

Be finished with this pretense! 
By the brand you bear on your brawny arm, 

That you hide with a silken sleeve, 
I name you the son of a shameful birth — 

Do you dare to disbelieve? 

"I name you the son of a shiftless drab 

In my father's gypsy-camp — 
Come, part the silk, let the people see 

By the light of your banquet-lamp 
The gypsy-mark on the strong sword-arm 

Of this son of a thousand kings — 
Who owes his life to a shameless churl 

On some nameless wanderings !" 

Now the King has paled to a sickly gray. 

And in woeful mood he sits. 
For never he ruled by lofty birth 

But eke by chance and wits ; 
Aye, his throne he had won by steel and luck 

That he held by steel and might, 
Yet never he thought to know the need 

To prove his heritage-right. 



[62] 



And now, as he reached for his trusty blade 

And cast his mantle back, 
On the swelling skin of his knotted arm 

A scar stood, grim and black, 
As though 'twere made by two twisted twigs 

Crossed in some children's play — 
Loud laughed the wight " 'Tis the patteran — 

A gypsy has been this way 1" 

O, clanking down to the marble floor 

Fell the blade from the royal hand — 
"Ah, gods !" cried the King. "Do I dream or 
wake ? 

Ye wight, do ye understand 
The arts of the devil? or are ye he^ 

Who has set this spell on me. 
To see my life as an opened scroll 

By strength of your sorcery? 

"For I seem to see my forgotten youth 

With all of its good and ill — 
There's a white road-ribbon runs beckoning 
down 

From the crest of a breaking hill; 
And over the hill lies Power and Fame, 

And the sun has stained it red. 
But lo, at the summit its hot rim gilds 

A crown for my daring head ! 
[63] 



"And it's over the hill to the brink o' doom 

I feel my footsteps swing — 
Ye may not jest with the gypsy-blood 

So be ye slave or king. 
You have witched me out of my crown and 
throne — 

Did you ask for roof and meat? 
I give you my palace and fertile fields — 

Go take what you need to eat! 

"For now I am off to the end of the world 

With only the wind for guide — 
Small price to pay on the houseless way — 

I'll saddle no steed of pride; 
So keep ye well — Long live the King! — 

And light be the scepter's load — 
Yet, if so I know the breed, we'll meet 

A little along the road!" 



[64] 



A PORTRAIT 

Born with a mask of insincerity 

You feigned the virtues all the world es- 
teemed ; 
To you the nude and graceful Verity, 

Purest of nymphs, a shameless wanton 
seemed ; 
You stalked through life in buskins — brought 
the posing. 
The green-room's make-up, to the work of 
men. 
And played your part so well, the last disclosing 
Unmasked you but to see you mask again! 

What 1J0U was underneath, the world may guess, 
But never prove — yet whether great or small 

The mummer-soul within, men still confess 
You were the bravest actor of them all — 

And write for epitaph "Nor fame nor pelf 

He asked, but merely NOT to he himself T' 



[65] 



THE KING AND I 

The King and I went forth to ride — 
(O fair the lands of his domain !) 

He spurned a beggar-lass aside 

Who dared to touch his bridle-rein ; 

I gave her a smile and a piece of gold — 

She threw me a kiss — the tale is told — 
Ah, brother with the seeing eye. 
Which was the richer^ he or I? 



[66] 



THE ROADSIDE WEEDS 

(The Vagabond Speaks) 

Though the world were mine for the plowing, 

The sowing of wheat or of tare, 
I'd spare the seeds of the vagrant weeds 

And fling them at random there; 
And if they should wither, 'tis justice, 

Yet if they should flourish, 'tis fair. 
For they are the yield of my favorite field 

In the garden of Devil-may-care! 

They are the gayest of friends on the highway. 

Though gray with the roadside dust. 
And gay on the narrowing byway 

When the wheatfield is sad with the rust; 
You can follow their fallow-land creeping 

Wherever the road may run — 
For they are the fruit of the reaping 

Of the fields of the Prodigal Son. 

And whose was the hand of their sowing? 

Go ask ye the wind in the trees ; 
Go ask ye the breeze that is blowing 

A magic from over the seas — • 



[67] 



"South I will grip ye a scepter, 

North I will win ye a helm, 
East and to West what your heart loves the 
best — 

Give ye the World for a realm!" 

"Aye, but the wealth of my harvest?" 

"Reap ye the weeds by the road — 
Or love ye to toil on a stubborner soil? 

Go get ye a master and goad." 
"Nay, I will keep to my vineyard — 

Mullen and bramble and tare, — 
For they are the yield of my favorite field 

In the garden of Devil-may-care!" 



[68] 



DISILLUSION 

"Seek me," she laughed, "at the Ends of Earth, 
Seek for me over the edge of Dawn — 
Are you so mighty of mind and brawn 

That you scorn to show a maid your worth? 

Follow the lead of my madcap mirth 
To Heaven-portal or Hades-gate — 
But tempt me not with the weary bait 

Of Prosy-plenty or Romance-dearth!" 

I sought her far where the heavens flame 
Like shimmering domes of molten brass — 

'Mid painted isles where the weird moon swings 
In the palm-tree's top like God's cuirass ; 

I found her — "Beloved/' she cried in shame — 
"Love lies not here, hut in common thingsT* 



[69] 



THE TIME-FOOLS 



YOUTH 



Though the lavish moments squander 

All the precious gold of pleasure, 
Though the ravished senses wander 
'Mid the cream of Ophir's treasure, 
Yet, hy all the gods above, 
Take the life, but leave us love! 

AGE 

Though the maidens' soft caresses 

Be as honey of Hymettus, 
Though the chilly soul confesses 
Eros-flames at last forget us, 
Toil or ease or peace or strife. 
Take the love, but leave us life! 



[70] 



THE HUCKSTER 

Buy a hit of magic. 

From the Hills o* Dream — 
Visions of the night-time. 

Never what they seem; 
Scraps of idle Fancy, 

Threads of fairy gold — 
Buy such mighty magic 

As was never sold! 

Buy a bit of magic 

You who scorn to dream — 
Would you glimpse the future 

Or the Past redeem? 
Clear against the darkness, 

Cloudy in the sun — 
Buy a skein o' Dream-stufF, 

All your hopes are wonl 

Dreams of gold and glamourie, far on Southern 
seas, 

Love and strife and venturing. Fancy's fan- 
tasies ; 

Seize them, O ye sleepers, snatch them while 
ye may — 

Like a breath of Heaven-wind, they have blown 



away! 



[71] 



Buy a pinch o' Romance 

Stolen over-sea, 
Where the palmy islands 

Promise royally — 
Wealth of hidden treasure, 

Store of pirate gold — 
Draw your gory cutlass, 

Glut your galley's hold! 

Would you know the conquest, the battle's 

ecstasy? 
Call your shadow armies, and lead to victory ; 
Yours to plunder Ophir, and yours the spoil 

of Ind— 
Hark the ghostly trumpet-call braying down 

the wind! 

I 
Buy a royal diadem 

Or a crown o' thorn — 
I have served your fathers 

Long ere you were born ; 
Aye, the long-tailed monkey. 

Dancing in the trees. 
Dreams, like you, of gardens 

Of Hesperides! 



[72] 



Or it be a maiden fair, whom you long to wed, 
Lo, and by my sorcery the marriage-words are 

said; 
Love and Hope, Ambition, Lust — all of them 

are thrall 
To the humble Dream-smith, the master of 

them all! 

Buy a hit of magic 

From the Hills o* Dream — 
Visions of the night-time. 

Never what they seem; 
Scraps of idle fancy. 

Threads of fairy gold — 
Buy such mighty magic 

As was never sold! 



[73] 



WHEN THE POET DIED 

One night a somber, dun processional 
Trailed drably through the crepe-hung avenues 
Of my dark city of tremendous dream, 
With hearsed and plumed terror; till I wept, 
Begging the mouthing mourners — "Lo, what 

king 
Is dead so greatly?" "Peace, Fool," they 

wailed, 
"Knowest thou not this night a poet died?" 

Then, as the bier wheeled grimly by, a vain 
Black-plumaged peacock proudly at the head 
Of all the dour cortege, methinks I heard 
A merry, mocking satyr laugh within. 



[741 



IN AVALON 

In Avalon, in Avalon away 

Beyond the circling rim of chaos-sea 
There lilts a song of dream and glamourle, 

In Avalon, in Avalon away; 

*'Ah, scatter, Spring, thy flowered fantasy, 

For Hero Might-have-been is wed to Princess 
Yesterday !" 

In Avalon, in Avalon away. 

Where you are Queen, O Love, and I am 

King, 
What reck we what the dim To-morrow bring. 
In Avalon, in Avalon away! 

I envy not the Gods their glorying. 
When Hero Might-have-been is wed to Prin- 
cess Yesterday. 

Ah, far and far, in Avalon away, 

Too far to fear the sting of sorrowing. 
The Hero Might-have-been has won the Prin- 
cess Yesterday! 



[75] 



THE SONG OF THE BUTTERFLIES 

Lilts the music through its measure 
Like the ripple of a dream, 

Trip the dancers through their pleasure 
Till the dawning-gleam ; 

Time is old and we are young — 
Thus the song is sung: 

"Love and Life forever last — 

Pluck the blowing rose, 
While the Demon of the Past 

Ever greater grows; 
Withered blossoms, dying love. 

Memory and Pain — 
Howsoe'er the harvest prove, 

Let us dance again!" 

Drop the petals of the flowers. 
Dims the fervor of the glance, 

Fly the fairy-golden hours. 
Handmaids of Romance — 

Time is young and we are old — 
Thus the tale is told: 



[76] 



"Loving, living, cannot last. 

Pluck the wilting rose — 
Let the Demon of the Past 

As the Present pose; 
Withered blossoms, dying love. 

Memory and Pain — 
Howsoe'er the harvest prove, 

Let us dance again 1" 



[77] 



DE AMICITIA 

"O WOULD I were happy as you!" I cried 

"Who laugh all the livelong day — 
Whom, all of the years that I've lived beside, 

I've never found aught but gay, — 
Or other than faithful and cheery and kind, 

Thoughtful, unselfish, and wise; 
'Tis surely a wonderful world you find 

Through the gold of your laughing eyes !" 

Ally friend who was nearest and dearest to me^ 

I knew you the least of all — 
You gave me the wine — so I should not see 

That you drank for yourself the gall! 



78] 



LEAVEN O' LIFE 

The wheat and tares of life were ground to 

meal — 
(So runs the ancient legend) — and the Gods 
Fashioned a myriad cakes, and baked them 

brown 
And crisp in passion's fire, then spread them 

wide 
On the broad window-ledge of Earth to cool; 
And lo, the cakes were called the race of Man, 
The wheat-meal Virtue, and the tare-dust 

Fault. 

"But" (saith the legend) "ere the grain was 

ground, 
While yet the mill-wheel labored, came a Faun, 
And mocked the busy gods, and pelted flowers — 
Violets, roses, columbine and rue — 
Till some by chance were mingled with the grain 
And leavened all: whence grew the wondrous 

gift 
Of power to see the splendor of the sky. 
Of power to feel the transport of the tear. 
Of power to fight with odds, to lose, to smile 
While losing, at the sneers of all the world — 
In brief, the gift that makes us more than Gods, 
And flings light-hearted lives to jest with Hell." 
[T9] 



THE TWO OF US 

I KNOW a chap — O, he's no friend of mine — 
A cautious chap, who keeps his wary eyes 
Fast on the path he treads, lest luring skies 

Seduce his prosy brain — or dawning-shine 

With lavish splendor craftily entwine 

His senses, so he walk in puddles. Now, 
Of course — if asked — ^he could (and would) 
tell how 

I, through my gay star-gazing (was it wine 

Or merely poetry that mixed me?) trod 

All careless through the mire, although I 

swore 
The glory of the sunset really bore 

Me, heedless of all else, right up to God. 

Now he was clean, and I was muddy-shod — 
Which of the two of us deserved the more? 



[80] 



A SONG OF THE OLD GODS 

O FOLLOW the wind o'er the beckoning hill 
Where the boundless kingdoms lie — 
Sons o' the Sun and Sky, 
Can ye barken and yet be still? 
Can ye hear the mirth 

Of the seas that swing 
To the ends of earth 

Where the breezes bring 
A chant of the years when the world was young 
When the heart was true and the hot lip clung 
{Ayey the -flowers were red on the Eden-tree — 
They're withered now on the Eden-tree) 
And Love ran wild i' the spring? 

O follow the road where it leaps to meet 
And carry ye off and away! 
Strap ye the wings o' Day 
To your laggard and lowly feet! 
Shall ye stop your ears 

To the winds that sing 
When the dawn appears 
And its flaming wing 



[81] 



Sweeps through a wood where the heart o' the 

Sun 
Hides in a rose when the day is done, 

{Aye, the -flowers were red on the Eden-tree — 
They're withered now on the Eden-tree^ 
And Love runs wild i' the spring? 



[82] 



AT THE ALTAR OF YOUTH AND LOVE 

"So that the Love-lights burn," I cried, 
"And brightly blaze, 
Not mine, O Love, in foolish pride 

To stint my praise ; 
So long as Youth and Thou remain 
I praise no God except ye twain." 

"But years have wings," the Voices say, 

And fleetly fly — 
Thy time is brief — an hour, a day — 

And then to die: 
Altars are bare, and Deities 
Are drunk, or sleep, or gone o'er seas !" 

"Nay, not my Gods!" I cry, "Behold! 

The sacred flame!" 
I show the altar, rich in gold. 

With loud acclaim; 
Alas, e*en while I prayed, the Fire 
Choked 'mid the ash of spent desire. 



[83] 



THE TOPS'L SCHOONER 

The Pirate Craft Speaks, 

You fear no more to see my sails 

Come sweeping up the seas. 
Nor guard with pike and carronade 

Your laden argosies; 
You never turn and run for it 

When the lookout bellows now 
^^ There's a low black tops'l schooner 

Just off the starboard bow!" 

You trudge the sea in sordidness, 

And find a sordid grave — 
Collision, ice, or hurricane, 

You'll die a burden-slave ; 
And never know the ecstasy 

Of a hot fight, hand-to-hand. 
With a low black tops'l schooner 

A hundred leagues from land ! 

You'll never smell the powder, 

Nor feel your hair-roots rouse 
When the long nine sends its warning 

Across your questing bows; 
When the round-shot splits the foremast, 

And your sturdy spirits fail 
As the low black tops'l schooner 

Pours men across your rail ! 
[84] 



No more you'll rake the Indies 

With clumsy "ninety-fours," 
And strand on hidden coral-reefs 

Off fever-ridden shores ; 
I showed your nimblest frigates 

The cleanest pair of heels — 
The low black tops'l schooner 

That never dawn reveals ! 

For now my snuggest harbor 

Shall know me ne'er again, 
And now my safest anchorage 

. Shall wait for me in vain — 
A ghost-ship, manned by phantoms 

From Morgan down to Kidd, 
The tops'l schooner's left for aye 

The islands where she hid ! 

You fear no more to see my sails 

Come sweeping up the seas. 
Nor guard with pike and carronade 

Your laden argosies; 
You never turn and run for it 

When the lookout bellows now 
''There's a low black tops'l schooner 

Just off the starboard bowT 



[85] 



LOTOPHAGOI 

Because we do not hold your God as true — 
O iron-hearted galley-slaves of gold — 

Because we do not judge our worship due 
A scowling Toil-wrought Baal of metal 
cold — 

Because our hearts are young, our sorrows few, 

Consider, are we baser clay than you? 

Because we love to dream away the days. 
And count the lavish sunlight ample prize. 

And deem your lust for power and human praise 
As senseless visions of a madman's eyes. 

Because we idle along sunny ways. 

Do we deserve the pity in your gaze? 

Because around our shores the warm waves roll. 
And palm-fringed islands strew our south- 
ern seas. 

Because we know no isles 'twixt Pole and Pole 
One-half so near to Paradise as these — 

Because we scorn your toil and miser's dole, 

We pray you, let no pity rend your soul! 



[86] 



''ET EGO IN ARCADIA VIXI—" 

O I was born in Arcady 

When all the world was young — 
Where the wood-thrush sings in his forest 

bowers 
"Loves may wither like fallen flowers, 
And fade like sunset-fantasy, 

To die unwept, unsung; 
Yet fields are rich in Arcady 

Where all the world is young!" 

O I have lived in Arcady 

And known the sun and rain — 
The glint of dawn on the dew-wet heather, 
Tears and laughter of April-weather, 
And lo, the woodland sorcery 

Has called me home again — 
For loves are true in Arcady 

Through years of sun and rain. 

Ah, love, the road to Arcady 
Is through the Hills o' Dream — 
Follow away till the cypress-alleys 
Open to sunlit, joyous valleys. 
And learn again the magicry 

Of dew and dawning-gleam ; 

For hearts are young in Arcady 

Beyond the Hills o' Dream! 

[ 87 ] 



GYPSY SONG 

Dawn- WINDS and a waxing sun, 

Eastern hills aglow, 
Soon the laggard shadows run 

To the vales below; 
Sheep-bells from the waking fold 

Tinkle merrily — 
Can ye fairer land behold 

Than fair Romany? 

Out beneath the open sky 

Hark the gypsy-song — 
O beloved, thou and I 

Tarry here too long! 
Burdenless and fancy-free, 

Take the wind for guide; 
What are kings to thee and me. 

Striding side by side? 

Out beyond the Ends of Earth, 

Off in Fairyland, 
Lies our goal — of little worth 

When To-day's at hand! 
Praise the Sun-god throned above, 

O ye strollers gay. 
And the goddess Life-and-Love 

Showing ye the way ! 
[88] 



Careless slaves of sun and breeze, 

Wind-flushed, sunburnt, browned. 
This our house, the friendly trees 

And the friendly ground ! 
Who knows where our heads will lie 

In such merry weather? 
Sun and wind and Thou and I 

Arm-in-arm together! 



[89] 



SEA CHANTEY 

When the storm-winds of Heaven have slain 
the Sun, 
And he dies in the bloody West, 
When the stars burn out, and the day is done 

O'er the endless sea's unrest, 
"Listen — O listen — " the Shadow cries 
To the blind sea-reapers — "Rise — O rise — 

No longer sleep — " 
Save us, O Lord, when the reapers reap ! 

When the ships swing out on the ebbing tide 

To the harbor of missing wrecks. 
And the wet sea-devils from overside 
Keep tryst on the reeling decks, — 
When the wind-fiends howl in the houseless 

dark, 
And the foam-paved water-ways lie stark, 

God of the Deep 
Save us, thy slaves, when the reapers reap! 



[90] 



"THE CITY OF DREADFUL DAWN" 

Like paint upon a pallid cheek, 
The nightmare-city daubs its chilly gray 
With warm red rouge of morn — 
And lo, the day, 
That shaking Age shall fear, that Youth shall 

seek, 
Trails in its bannered pageantry of scorn — 
Mocking awhile in noonday pride 
And then 
Veiling again 'neath curtained sunset-skies 
The horrors, cloaked and masked, that laugh- 
ing ride 
To grace the shambles of a Paradise. 

Poor Time-fools bowed before an empty shrine! 

With each the Goddess died, with each began ; 
Hail, Lucifer! Haste, gild with light divine 

The pale slaves of thy painted courtesan! 



[911 



VICTORY-SONG OF THE ^GEAN 
PIRATES 

Swift as the seagull that turns in the sun with 

the dew of the spray on the gray of her 

wings, 
Flashing to whirl like an eddy of breeze that 

old ^olus checks in the flush of its 

flight- 
So, O Beloved, we harry the lumbering hulks of 

the clumsy flotilla that brings 
Spices from Egypt and Pontus and Persia 

and rich-woven silks from the Borders of 

Light. 

Rangers are we of the Narrower Sea, where 

the islands are scattered as spindrift 

that flies 
Roused from its coverts of beryl and emerald, 

lairs of the nymphs of the Winds and 

the Waves — 
Spindrift that leaping to 'scape from the prow 

that is notched to a star in the African 

skies 
Wins o'er the gunwale and beats on the 

backs of the kings of the sweep-head — 

the bent galley-slaves! 

[92] 



O my Beloved, the oar-thresh shall sing of my 
love and the kingdom I cast at thy 
feet— 
Lo, I am lord of the rock-battered seas, and 
my sword is a terror from Thrace to 
Cyrene ! 

King, by the sway of the staggering deck as 
we reel through the wreck of the fight, 
and the fleet 
Hails us the masters of Hades and Heaven 
and seas that are given to billow be- 
tween ! 

Swing her about! Let them drown if they will, 
let them choke in their blood and the 
sense of their shame — 
They who are slaves of the Rome of the 
West, where the sun sinks to rest on 
Hesperian shores. 

Swing her about — let them die in the dark, 
where the wake is a wavering welter of 
flame — 
Drop them behind to the drone of the wind 
and the dirge of the drum of our hurry- 
ing oars! 



[93] 



MY FRIEND PAN 

With Pan amid the flowers, 

When I was young and gay, 
I danced away the hours 

With rhyme and roundelay; 
For the world was at its spring. 

And Life was at its morn — 
Who dreamed the years would bring 

When the Rose died, the Thorn? 

But when the summer faded — 

The summer-time of Youth — 
And weary, worn and jaded, 

I felt the Thorn of Truth, 
I turned to Pan a-sighing 

For solace of romance — 
Cried he, "Come, haste thy dying — 

We youngsters want to dance!" 



[94 1 



THE ROAD TO ROMANY 

"And what is the worth of your fertile realm?" 

Sang the wind to the weary king, 
"And what is the price of your jeweled helm, 

Or the tribute the barons bring? 
Your palace I'll buy with the roofless sky, 

For your gold I'll give you the sun, 
For your silken bed, you may lay your head 

On the earth, when the day is done. 

^'By the side of the Road to Romany, 

The magic Road to Romany — 
ril buy your crown for a wind-swept down 

And a bit of the Road to Romany!'' 

"And what do I want with my sheltered fields?" 

Cried the king to the restless breeze. 
"I'd give all the tribute my kingdom yields 

For a cure for my soul's disease; 
O my throne I'll trade for a leafy glade 

With the white road beckoning through. 
And my helm I'll pawn for a golden dawn 

And the voice of a comrade true ! 

*'We two on the Road to Romany , 

The magic Road to Romany — 
O Vd sell my crown for a wind-swept down 

And a bit of the Road to Romanyl" 
[95] 



THE SONG OF THE OPTIMIST 

Though the vintage be poor, at the best, 

Drink it up — it is wine; 
So it kindle the heart, for the rest 

You're a fool to repine. 
So you find in the dream and desire 
Full reward for the sting and the tire, 
Though the price be the gold of the West, 

Drink it up — it is wine! 

O the maid is not fair at the most — 

What of that — it is Love. 
Or perhaps you have loved and have lost — 

It is Heaven above 
While it lasts, and for all of the pain. 
If you lived it all over again. 
Though your honor and soul were the cost — 

Would you stop, if 'twere Love? 

Have you wasted your fortune of years? 

Never mind — it is life. 
Have you harvested nothing but tears 

From the barrens of Strife? 
Have you failed, and seen crumble the dream 
That you built with your blood where the gleam 
Of the fading false-dawn disappears? 

Think of this — it is life! 
[96] 



JUL lu iyi5 



